A rift over a weed killer is dividing a pro-Trump alliance

The MAGA-MAHA alliance helped carry Donald Trump back to the White House. It handed Robert F. Kennedy Jr. control of the nation's health agencies. Now, it may fracture over a widely used herbicide.

President Donald Trump's decision that expanded domestic production of glyphosate earlier this year was a national security priority and not an endorsement of the use of the weed killer, White House officials have said - part of his Make America Great Again platform.

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Some advocates of Kennedy's Make America Healthy Again movement, particularly those angry over pesticides, have countered that boosting the active ingredient in the herbicide Roundup was unforgivable - and part of a pattern of the administration siding with the industry over public health concerns.

Now some influential MAHA activists are channeling their anger at Heidi Overton, a top Trump aide whom the president has selected to lead the Food and Drug Administration, saying they fear she will not fiercely challenge corporate interests and disrupt the status quo.

Although the FDA isn't charged with evaluating the safety of pesticides, Overton's nomination has become emblematic of the broader frustrations from some MAHA activists - and turned into a proxy war over the kinds of nominees they are seeking to lead the nation's health agencies. It's not clear whether the resistance from some MAHA supporters will dampen her confirmation prospects in the Senate. But she's already facing a difficult path: Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-Louisiana), the chair of the Senate health panel, who said he has "strong concerns" due to her role in announcing a recent executive order seeking a reduction in the childhood vaccine schedule.

"I want the administration to be in good favor with these [MAHA] voters and these mothers," said Alex Clark, a prominent conservative wellness influencer and podcaster aligned with the MAHA movement. "And this is the type of behavior that they see and they see it as this administration is not weeding out compromised individuals from our three-letter agencies [like] we were promised. And so they're losing enthusiasm."

The disagreements between some in MAHA and MAGA spilled into public view last week, as Clark and White House spokesman Kush Desai sparred over Overton and her involvement in a February executive order to spur production of glyphosate, a move that had infuriated the movement's activists.

Clark instructed her more than 166,000 followers on X to "rise up" on social media, as well as call their senators, to express opposition to Overton's nomination. She accused Overton of writing the executive order to boost glyphosate, and later argued she should have stopped it.

"This is not true," Desai wrote in a lengthy response on X. The executive order originated with the national security team, Desai said, adding that Overton was looped into the process at the end and "pushed as many MAHA-minded edits as possible to a mostly-baked EO that, again, was written with national security considerations in mind."

The public attacks from Clark and others have frustrated White House officials, who say that Overton has been a major advocate for MAHA's priorities in Trump's second term. Earlier this month, she stood near Trump as he signed an executive order aimed at cutting the number of recommended childhood vaccines, praising the move decried by the medical establishment as "historic." Administration officials point to ways that they have delivered for the movement - pushing food companies to eliminate artificial dyes, boosting regenerative agriculture and updating the dietary guidelines - roughly 70 days out from the midterm elections.

"As Deputy Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy, Dr. Heidi Overton has spent the last year and a half coordinating interagency policymaking processes with senior officials across HHS, FDA, CDC, USDA, and other agencies to help deliver on almost every single MAHA victory that the Trump administration has secured for the American people," Desai said in a statement.

Overton helped write and push for a June executive order aimed at spurring research and boosting regenerative agriculture, Desai said. He added that the earlier executive order that included glyphosate was meant to "strengthen our national security by ensuring domestic supply of the elemental phosphorous that is critical for the production of key military and other technological hardware."

White House officials also said that some criticism of Overton is based on a misunderstanding of her role. As a domestic policy aide, her job is to vet policy proposals to be sure they are legally sound - and when she says no to some ideas, it's not based on her personal preferences.

She "has been integral to ensuring that the Administration's policies are correct, consistent, and grounded in Gold Standard Science," Desai said.

The MAHA movement was born out of the 2024 political union between Trump and Kennedy, and consists of various factions, such as those pushing for tighter regulations over pesticides, the elimination of vaccine mandates and healthier foods. It merges Kennedy's penchant for bashing corporate interests with the MAGA branding, and some Republican operatives have credited it with helping woo some left-leaning and independents to vote for Trump.

The rapidly assembled MAHA-MAGA partnership, hammered out by slain conservative activist Charlie Kirk and other influential figures in the late stages of Trump's 2024 presidential campaign, has defied some predictions that the Kennedy-Trump bond would quickly fizzle out. At the time, Trump's support for environmental rollbacks and Kennedy's longtime environmental advocacy appeared destined for a collision.

Now some high-profile MAHA supporters say the GOP is on the precipice of losing critical votes in November, warning that some MAHA moms, a key part of the coalition, are planning to sit the midterm elections out. They want to see White House officials more rapidly achieve some of the movement's goals, particularly around cracking down on pesticides they argue are harmful to children's health.

"That clock is really ticking and it's very surprising to me that a lot of these wins that would have been very easy to get by now haven't happened, especially on the pesticide front," said Kelly Ryerson, a prominent activist against pesticides known online as "The Glyphosate Girl."

In a statement, Desai said the administration has made "historic progress" on the MAHA agenda.

"Make America Healthy Again was not just a campaign slogan - it was President Trump's pledge to tackle America's chronic disease epidemic," he said. "Delivering on this pledge has been a whole-of-government effort led by Secretary Kennedy and other key Administration officials."

Kennedy - who in 2024 called glyphosate "one of the likely culprits in America's chronic disease epidemic" - has sought to walk a tightrope on pesticides while in the administration. Kennedy told Joe Rogan that the move boosting production of glyphosate was "not something I was particularly happy with," to put it "mildly," but that he understood the president's point of view.

The MAHA movement was built on the idea of ushering in a new era of health department leaders who were skeptical of, or fiercely resisted, the medical establishment. But Trump officials have since swapped out some of Kennedy's deputies and allies in a bid to tamp down on controversies at the nation's health department, while others have resigned or been ousted. The changes have tested the power of the movement and led to questions over Kennedy's influence.

Overton is a physician who is board-certified in public health and general preventive medicine. She previously served as a White House fellow during the first Trump administration and then worked at the America First Policy Institute, a conservative think tank. During Trump's second term, she has been intricately involved in his health agenda as a top White House aide at the Domestic Policy Council, playing a largely behind-the-scenes role in many of the administration's health policy announcements.

Her selection to lead the FDA, if confirmed, would give her one of the most powerful health care perches in America, overseeing the safety of drugs, vaccines, tobacco and the bulk of the nation's food supply. MAHA advocates say the sprawling agency is crucial to helping curb the nation's high rates of chronic disease and childhood illness, an overarching goal of the movement.

Her allies say that Overton is a hard worker with deep interest in health policy who has ingratiated herself with the president and other senior leaders and does not seek the spotlight.

"She does the homework," said one official who works with Overton and spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly comment.

Two people familiar with Overton's work in the White House described her as having a more incremental approach to policy changes. She was initially resistant to some of the efforts aimed at expanding access to psychedelics for mental health conditions this spring, raising questions about the expansive scope of the plan, according to four people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to detail internal matters, but eventually blessed the directive. The move won cheers from MAHA supporters, veterans and some lawmakers on both sides of the aisle.

At a signing ceremony for the executive order to accelerate research into psychedelics and fast-track reviews of the drugs, Kennedy turned to Overton.

"Thank you, Heidi, for your leadership," he said, "and for your attention to detail, which is often frustrating but always right."

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